REVIEW
“His costume glittered like a starry sky, and no matter what the haters said, it absolutely did not look like it was sequined.”
As much as I would like to deny putting any sort of expectation before I read this book, I had quite a bit — having read, and enjoyed, The House in the Cerulean Sea. It’s safe to say that the miniscule of expectation was trampled on by how the book was execurted.
The Extraordinaries follows a story of a young adult who has strong fascination for these real-life superheroes in his city. He adores them to the point that he even wrote a fan-fiction of them. Rainbow Rowell-esque.
In itself, the story was interesting. I find it charming to see a young man fascinated by this surreal human with extraordinary powers; however, it was thrown off balance by how predictable the entire story is. Perhaps it is part of what the author wanted to lay down, and if it is, it didn’t work as well as he thought it would.
Every part of the story is easily expected. One line leads to another and it’s as if you can stop reading the story when you reach a certain point of the book — it is more of an in-your-face kind of writing style that there was almost no room for your mind to think. Even the climatic portion of the story was pretty underwhelming. Given that it can easily be divined.
The characters of the story are fantastic. I love each and everyone of them and I think their role was pretty good in developing the main character’s personality. It was quite unfortunate, though, that the antagonist of the story was weirdly injected within a closed-knit group without any real tension aside from a juvenile fling.
I adore the way the book was written in connection to the personality of the main character. The amount of chapter break can be unnerving, at times, however, it perfectly encapsulated the distinct individuality of the main character of the book. It gave the readers an experience on how his mind can easily be distracted and that distortion with the writing pace created a good connection between the audience and the book.
There is one last thing that truly shook me off balance while reading this book. And that is how the book felt more of a long advertisement than a book itself (if you are Filipino and you’ve watched a certain film by Vice Ganda, you’ll know what I’m saying). The book felt like it was written to promote Marvel, and although the superhero aspect of the novel gives this perfect sense, I find it lazy. I believe that the author could have given us a better way for the book to show an appreciation for superheroes by creating its own set of heroic world. Compound it within his stories. Considering this is a series, it would’ve worked.
I think that The Extraordinaries was more of a practice tool for the author to see how well he can create a story that revolves around a superhero theme. It was entirely predictable, losing that climatic excitement. The characters were interesting, but they fell flat outside of their role to be eagerness to be a good friend of the main protagonist. And, of course, the entirety of it has the aura of an advertising than something that is made for itself. I swear I thought this was a ploy for me to read comics. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
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